Due or Die

by Jenn McKinlay

  Marjorie gave her a suspicious look. Lindsey took that to mean she was crazy but perhaps not stupid. Lindsey took Beth’s elbow and led her to the door. As she pushed her through, she whispered, “Call the police.”

  Beth gave her a quick nod and hurried off.

  Lindsey left the door open just a crack, in case Marjorie went batty on her, and then took her seat behind her desk.

  “Now, I understand that you are unhappy with me,” Lindsey said. “What can I do to make things better?”

  “Make Bill the president again,” Marjorie said.

  “The Friends have to make that decision,” Lindsey said. She had a feeling this conversation was going to be as repetitive as a hamster’s run on a wheel, and they’d probably get about as far.

  “You control the Friends,” Marjorie said. “They will do whatever you tell them to. That’s why they voted him out to begin with.”

  “I never told anyone to vote him out,” Lindsey said.

  “Then why were you at the meeting that night?” she asked. Her gaze fleetingly met Lindsey’s before moving to fixate on something behind her head.

  “I was at the meeting to bear witness to the fairness of the proceedings,” Lindsey said. She did not add that she’d been there mostly to keep Bill from having a hissy fit, because she didn’t really think it would help her case with Marjorie even if it was the truth.

  “Fair?” Marjorie’s voice became shrill, and Lindsey glanced out her office window, hoping to see a police car arriving. Nothing yet.

  “Would you like a mint?” she asked. She pulled a canister of mints from her desk drawer and offered it to Marjorie. “They’re butter mints; they melt in your mouth.”

  Marjorie frowned at her, her expression distrustful. “Why are you being nice to me?”

  “I’m nice to everyone,” Lindsey said.

  “Not Bill,” Marjorie retorted. She took off one mitten and then opened the canister. Snatching a fistful of mints, she shoved them in her coat pocket as if afraid Lindsey was going to grab the candy back.

  She looked like a scared little kid, and Lindsey felt a pang of sympathy for her. Marjorie couldn’t help it if she was a few cards short of a full deck. Maybe she just needed some understanding.

  “I’m sorry that the Friends vote has been so upsetting for you,” Lindsey said. “But you can’t go around threatening people and trying to run them over with your car because you don’t like the way things turned out.”

  Marjorie stuffed a mint in her mouth and chewed furiously.

  “That sort of behavior doesn’t help anything,” Lindsey said. She spoke calmly, hoping that maybe she was getting through to Marjorie.

  “You know what I think?” Marjorie asked. She swallowed her candy, and her eyes went wide, so wide that Lindsey could see white all around the irises.

  “No, Marjorie, what do you think?”

  Marjorie jumped from her seat and pointed a bony finger at Lindsey. Then she bellowed in a voice so loud and deep that it sounded like it came from the bowels of hell.

  “I think you killed Markus Rushton, that’s what I think.”

  At that moment, the door swung wide and in walked Chief Daniels.

  “You had a torrid affair with Markus Rushton,” Marjorie continued, still pointing at Lindsey. “You were madly in love with him, but he ended it, and you were devastated, so you shot him and killed him.”

  The chief looked at Lindsey, who gave him a bemused smile and a finger wave. “Hi.”

  The chief glanced between them and then shook his head as if to clear it of confusion. Then he looked at Marjorie and said, “Marjorie, I’m going to need you to come to the station.”

  “Why?” she asked. “She’s the one you should be arresting. She’s a murderess!”

  Chief Daniels stepped forward, and Marjorie started shifting her weight from foot to foot as if gauging how she could run around him and get out the door.

  Chief Daniels was not a little man, however, and the odds were unlikely that she’d make it even if her reflexes were faster than his. The man just took up too much space.

  “I need to talk to you about what’s been happening over the past few days.”

  “What about her?” Marjorie pointed at Lindsey. “Don’t you need to question her?”

  Chief Daniels turned his back to Marjorie and looked at Lindsey. He opened his eyes wide, and she figured he was trying to tell her to go with it.

  “I’ve got Officer Plewicki coming to pick up Ms. Norris here.”

  “So, you know she killed Markus Rushton,” Marjorie said. She looked impressed with the chief.

  Lindsey opened her mouth to protest, but the chief gave her a look that clearly said shut up, so she did. It wasn’t easy.

  “We have several people we need to question in regards to the murder,” he said. “And, of course, I need your statement.”

  “Oh!” Marjorie’s little body went aquiver. “Of course I’ll give my statement. I have all kinds of information about everyone, you know.”

  “That’s what I’m counting on,” he said.

  Lindsey watched as he led Marjorie out of her office and through the library. She exhaled and realized she’d been holding her breath for the past several minutes. There was something in those eyes of Marjorie’s that made her skin crawl.

  And she wondered, did Marjorie’s crazy accusation hold some truth to it? Like maybe Marjorie’d had the affair with Rushton, maybe she was the killer?

  Beth appeared at her side with Ann Marie.

  “What was that all about?”

  “Marjorie seems to think I had a torrid affair with Markus Rushton and killed him because he dumped me,” Lindsey said.

  “Wow,” Ann Marie said. “I wouldn’t be too concerned if I were you. She once told me that my boys were the obvious by-product of an alien-on-human experiment gone wrong.”

  Both Lindsey and Beth looked at her. Ann Marie’s boys were known for TPing their teachers’ houses and teaching Beth’s mechanical parrot dirty words, and last year they hijacked a float in the annual Fourth of July parade so they could sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with armpit fart accompaniment into the microphone, among other things.

  “Well, I’m not saying she’s wrong about everything,” Ann Marie said and then grinned.

  Lindsey chuckled, happy to release the knot of tension that had torqued her from the moment Batty had walked into her office.

  The front door to the library slid open and Officer Emma Plewicki walked in. She glanced around the room and headed toward Lindsey.

  She was dressed in her usual uniform of dark blue pants and pale shirt. She had on her government-issued fleece-lined coat and a matching hat with earflaps; only someone as pretty as Emma could make that hat look fashionable.

  “Hi, Emma,” Lindsey said. “Thanks for responding so quickly. You wouldn’t believe the crazy talk Marjorie was spewing. She was really beginning to make me nervous.”

  Emma nodded, then cleared her throat and glanced quickly down at the floor before glancing up to meet Lindsey’s gaze with hers. “Ms. Norris, I’m going to need you to come to the station with me.”

  CHAPTER

  27

  BRIAR CREEK

  PUBLIC LIBRARY

  “What?” Lindsey, Ann Marie and Beth asked together.

  Officer Plewicki leveled them with her best you’re-parked-in-a-red-zone-and-I’m-giving-you-a-whopper-of-a-ticket stare. Then she doubled over. Her shoulders were shaking and Lindsey was sure she was having a fit. Then a snort escaped through her nose and Lindsey realized she was laughing.

  “Oh, that was just mean,” Lindsey said, but she couldn’t help but smile, especially as her heart had resumed beating again.

  “I got you,” Emma said. “I got you good.”

  Beth and Ann Marie both sagged with relief, and Beth exchanged knuckles with Emma. “Well played, girlfriend.”

  “Can I hire you to scare my boys with that?” Ann Marie asked and Emma grinned. />
  “All kidding aside, I really do need you to come to the station,” Emma said. “The chief thinks it will encourage Marjorie to talk if she sees you coming in.”

  “Do I have to wear cuffs?” Lindsey asked.

  “No, but if you put up a fight, I’ll taze you,” Emma said and Lindsey blanched. Then Emma busted up again and said, “I am on a roll today.”

  Lindsey glanced at the clock. She was beginning to think she was never going to get any work done.

  “How long will you need me?”

  “Not long,” Emma said. “It’s just a walk-on part. In through the front door, past the interrogation rooms and out the back door.”

  “All right, I can do that,” Lindsey said. She looked at Beth and Ann Marie. “Back in fifteen.”

  “Don’t get tazed,” Beth said with a wave.

  As they passed Ms. Cole, the lemon puckered up at the sight of Lindsey leaving. “I was not aware that we were closed already.”

  “We’re not.” Lindsey sighed. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  “Mr. Tupper never had police officers escorting him from the building.”

  Perhaps after the stressful events of the day, she had just reached her breaking point, but for once Lindsey simply could not listen to the effusive worship of her predecessor.

  “That’s because Mr. Tupper was as boring as day-old bread!” she snapped.

  Ms. Cole stood there with her mouth hanging open like the cover of a book with a broken binding, and Lindsey turned and followed Emma out the door with just the tiniest bit of self-satisfied swagger in her step.

  * * *

  “Those were Italian,” Lindsey said.

  Heathcliff looked at her from under his bushy eyebrows. Then he lay his head down on his paws, looking pitiful.

  Lindsey sighed and tossed the brown flats into the trash. There wasn’t a shoemaker alive who could mend the shredded leather.

  “Come here,” she said. Heathcliff bolted for her and she knelt down and caught him as he wiggled up against her. “I shouldn’t have left them out where you could chew them. It was my fault.”

  He licked her chin as if grateful for her forgiveness with a promise not to do it again. Lindsey didn’t doubt his intentions, but she went through her apartment, moving anything that might prove too tempting for his itchy puppy teeth.

  She took him out for a walk afterward, and while he was cavorting in the snow in the small front yard, a car pulled up. It was Edmund Sint.

  “Don’t tell me you actually have an honest to goodness day off,” he said.

  “It happens twice a week,” Lindsey said. “Like clockwork.”

  “So, how is the wonder dog?” he asked.

  “Heathcliff, a wonder dog?” Lindsey repeated as she walked over to stand beside his car.

  “Well, he’s the talk of the town since he rescued you ladies from that locked shed,” he said.

  “Oh, yes, that was definitely his shining moment, unlike this morning’s incident with my shoes.” Lindsey glanced back at the puppy frolicking in the snow bank.

  “Shoes?” Edmund asked.

  “Better tasting than Milk-Bones, apparently,” she said.

  “Well, you have to give him a pass since he saved you from hypothermia,” he said. He bent down and clapped his hands and Heathcliff came bounding over.

  He sniffed Edmund’s gloves and then his shoes. They must not have been on his tasty list, because he trotted over to Lindsey and sat on her feet.

  “Was it something I said?” Edmund asked.

  “Probably just not his taste in footwear,” Lindsey said.

  Edmund laughed. “I can live with that.”

  “Well, I don’t think he’ll have to be on alert anymore. I doubt if there’ll be any more dangerous incidents like the shed now that Marjorie Bilson has been arrested for murder.”

  “She has?” Edmund asked. “Was she the one who killed Rushton, then?”

  “Yes. I got the call this morning,” Lindsey said. “Marjorie has been terrorizing Carrie Rushton since she took over for the Friends. The police think she may have let her feelings for your uncle cause her to shoot Markus Rushton in the mistaken belief that if Carrie was arrested for murdering her husband, then Bill would be president again.”

  “But that’s mental,” Edmund said.

  “Precisely,” Lindsey said.

  “I mean why wouldn’t she just shoot Carrie if she didn’t want her to be president?”

  “Well, she’s not exactly operating at full capacity,” Lindsey said. “It’s hard to imagine what her reasoning might have been. Honestly, it’s just all-around sad.”

  “Well, since you have the day off and there are no murderers lurking about, why don’t we have that lunch we had planned on?”

  Lindsey tipped her head and looked at Edmund. He was handsome and charming and so very much like her ex that he was comfortingly familiar. But she didn’t feel that rush of attraction or interest that she felt when Sully was around. Of course, Sully had yet to invite her to lunch, and she had no idea if he ever would.

  “You know, that sounds nice,” she said. It wasn’t a date. It was just lunch. Besides she’d get to look at the Sint estate, and given that it was the most opulent residence in Briar Creek, she couldn’t help but be curious.

  Edmund consulted his watch. “We could go now.”

  Lindsey clipped Heathcliff’s leash to his collar. “I’ll just take him in and freshen up. Back in a few minutes?”

  “Excellent,” he said.

  Lindsey hurried through the front door and found Nancy in the foyer.

  “Is that Edmund Sint?”

  “It is,” Lindsey said.

  “What’s he want?”

  “He’s invited me to lunch at his place,” Lindsey said. She went to go up the stairs, but Nancy put her hand on her arm.

  “And you’re going?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Lindsey said. She turned to go up the stairs again but Nancy tightened her grip.

  “What about Sully?”

  Lindsey turned around. “What about him?”

  “Well, everyone knows you two like each other. I just assumed…”

  “Sully hasn’t asked me out,” Lindsey said. “Edmund has.”

  “But…”

  “No buts,” Lindsey said. “If Sully wants me, he knows where to find me.”

  “Sully’s nicer,” Nancy said.

  “Agreed.” Lindsey turned and began to go up the stairs, but Nancy slipped Heathcliff’s leash out of her hands. “I’ll dog sit. He’s good company.”

  “Are you sure?” Lindsey asked. “He has shoe issues, you know.”

  “Not to worry,” Nancy said. “I’m making peanut butter cookies today. They’re his favorite.”

  As if to voice his agreement, Heathcliff barked and wagged.

  “Well, thank you, I won’t be late. It’s just lunch.”

  “Have fun,” Nancy said. “But not too much.”

  Lindsey smiled as she headed up the stairs. It was obvious who Nancy’s favorite was. She had just reached the second-floor landing when Nancy yelled, “Sully’s funnier!”

  “Agreed,” she called down.

  At the third-floor landing, she heard Nancy shout, “Sully’s more charming!”

  “Agreed,” she answered, hanging over the banister to be heard.

  She was opening her door, when she heard Nancy cry, “Sully’s hotter!”

  Lindsey felt her face get warm, and she did not bother answering. Instead, she slipped inside her apartment, pretending she hadn’t heard Nancy, and closed her door with a click.

  Five minutes later, she dashed down the stairs with her hair brushed and fresh mascara on. She had traded her comfy sweatshirt for a royal blue turtleneck sweater over black jeans and felt perfectly respectable for a casual lunch.

  Nancy was in her doorway with Heathcliff sitting at her feet. Lindsey stopped to pet her pup and kiss his head.

  “Be good,” she whispered in his ear.
“No chewing.”

  He thumped his tail and she felt reassured that he would behave.

  “Back in two hours,” she said. “Tops.”

  “Sully’s—” Nancy began, but Lindsey cut her off.

  “I get it,” she said. “And I feel the same way, but he hasn’t asked me out. So there we are.”

  Nancy pursed her lips. “Men are stupid.”

  “Agreed!” Lindsey said. She stepped close and gave Nancy a quick hug. “Not too many cookies. He might get sick.”

  Nancy waved her out the door, and Lindsey hurried down the shoveled walk to Edmund’s car. He held open the door and she slid onto the warm leather seat. He hurried around the car and they started off.

  As they turned onto the street, Lindsey felt her eyes widen as they passed Sully’s beat-up pickup truck. For just a second, her eyes met Sully’s and the world narrowed to just the two of them. Then Edmund hit the gas, and they sped on, leaving Sully behind.

  CHAPTER

  28

  BRIAR CREEK

  PUBLIC LIBRARY

  Lindsey’s mouth went dry. What had Sully been doing there, looking as if he was about to turn into Nancy’s drive? Had he been coming to see her?

  Oh, no. What could he possibly think of her in Edmund’s car? Wait. Why did she care? The man hadn’t asked her out. Yes, she liked him, but really, other than a heated moment during the blizzard, what did she have to go on that he liked her?

  “…and then I put on a bird suit and jumped off of the roof, but no matter how hard I flapped, I could not fly.”

  “Huh?” Lindsey shook her head and focused on Edmund.

  “I just wondered if you were listening,” he said. “You seemed a million miles away.”

  “So, you didn’t put on a bird suit?” she asked.

  “No, I did however mention that Simpson, our domestic staff person, makes a fabulous lobster bisque if that works for you.”

  “It sounds delicious,” she said.

  She shook her head. She refused to dwell on Sully or what he thought. This was lunch. No big deal. She blamed Nancy. It was her fault for pointing out how Sully outshined anyone within his vicinity. Very annoying.

  The Sint estate sat on an isolated ten-acre section of the bay. Built in the 1800s with railroad money, it had been in the Sint family since Cornelius Sint had it built for his bride Margaret Astor. The winding, gravel drive was framed on both sides by giant copper beech trees. Despite their present lack of leaves, they still had the look of benevolent sentries, monitoring the comings and goings of the estate.